1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a manufacturing apparatus and method for a semiconductor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a scanning exposure method and an apparatus thereof.
2. Description of Related Art
Liquid crystal display (LCD) has many advantages over other conventional types of displays including high display quality, small volume, light weight, low driving voltage and low power consumption. Large size, high resolution, wide view and rapid response time are the main demands on the LCDs. From the LCDs used in desktop computers to the popular liquid crystal televisions, and further the ultra large LCDs, the size of the LCDs is increasingly great.
Generally, the exposure manufacturing process of the large-size LCD is carried out by a scanning exposure method. FIG. 1A illustrates a schematic view of a conventional scanning exposure apparatus. As illustrated in FIG. 1A, the conventional scanning exposure apparatus fixes the positions of a mask 104 and a substrate 106, and moves a light source 102 from one side of the mask 104 to the other side thereof for scanning the whole mask 104. The light of the light source 102 therefore completely transfers a mask pattern of the mask 104 to a photoresist layer of the substrate 106.
FIG. 1B illustrates a schematic view of another conventional scanning exposure apparatus. In contrast to the apparatus in FIG. 1A, the scanning exposure apparatus in FIG. 1B fixes the position of the light source 102, and moves the mask 104 and the substrate 106 synchronously. The same result as that of FIG. 1A is thus attained.
In these conventional scanning exposure apparatuses, with their single-scan exposure procedure, the size of the mask 104 is limited to the size of the substrate 106. The sizes of the modern LCDs are greater, and if the conventional scanning exposure apparatus is used to manufacture the large-size LCDs, the size of the mask thereof has to be greater or, alternatively, a multiple scan exposure procedure has to be used. However, when the size of the mask is greater, the manufacturing cost thereof is very expensive and the yield thereof is also suboptimal. Moreover, the increase of the size of the mask has ultimate limitation. Hence, considering the quality and cost, one conventional method uses a seamless procedure to combine small-size liquid crystal panels and obtain a large-size LCD. But the seamless procedure sometimes joins poorly, thus generating many problems.